“Blood Calls Blood” begins and ends with a funeral.
The first is for the dozens slaughtered by Logain’s now-vanquished army.
Kerene is dead, and he’s alive.
Marcus Rutherford as Perrin and Madeleine Madden as Egwene on ‘The Wheel of Time.'.Amazon Studios
It’s not supposed to work like that.
So, what now?
What does a warder do when he loses the Aes Sedai he’s sworn to protect?
Madeleine Madden as Egwene on ‘The Wheel of Time’.Amazon Studios
Stepin, it seems, didn’t want to know the answer.
Stepin, after all, was nothing but a drunken brawler before Kerene plucked him from obscurity.
The person he was without her is not someone he wants to resurrect.
Stepin has no intention of joining her, however.
How would either fare without the other?
The teary, loaded gazes they share speak volumes.
Their fates are perhaps even more intertwined than they thought.
Before he dies, Stepin teases Lan, saying Nynaeve (Zoe Robins) is falling for him.
Moraine, too, has noticed how cozy the two have been getting.
Like Stepin, Nynaeve, too, is at a crossroads.
The life she knew, being a Wisdom in a small mountain village, is gone.
“Now you’re wondering: how do I fit into the world?”
She’s also wondering where her friends are.
Moraine tells her to stay in her room, lest she get swept up in “Tower politics.”
She wasn’t kidding the first person Nynaeve encounters upon venturing into the Tower is the red-ringed Liandrin.
Liandrin, no friend to Moraine, instantly declares Nynaeve “free from Moraine’s cage.”
She also reacts to Nynaeve’s claim that she and the other reds “hate men.”
Reds, after all, don’t employ warders.
Moraine’s engaging in a bit of Tower politics herself.
Moraine’s reply: “One thing she doesn’t share is your contempt for men.”
Not yet, at least.
Little does she know that Liandrin’s already planting those seeds of hate.
They’re not alone in Tar Valon.
Rand and Mat have also arrived but are steering clear of the White Tower.
He obviously needs help, but Rand remembers Thom’s warning.
Thom believed that Mat touched the One Power and was being driven mad by it.
His fear was that Mat would be gentled by the Aes Sedai if he stepped foot in the Tower.
As such, the pair has taken up residence at a local inn.
There, Rand makes a new friend, an ogre sorry,Ogier named Loial.
A gentle (and inquisitive) giant, Loial jabbers Rand’s ear off about fiction and history.
(Seriously, though, was a scene missing?
That all happened really fast.)
Instead, she offers Rand hope that Egwene (Madeleine Madden) is still alive.
And, yes, Egweneisstill alive, but just barely.
If it’s true, he’ll kill her.
If it’s not, he’ll kill Perrin, whom he tortures with a wine-soaked blade.
“Decide which one of you it will be,” he tells Egwene.
As he cuts, Perrin’s pained eyes begin to take on a curious gold hue.
During a lull in the torture, Perrin tells her to save herself.
Valda laughs, but it’s a trick she subtly singed Perrin’s ropes, too, freeing him.
But there’s more than just magic at play here.
Having freed herself, Egwene plunges a knife into her torturer and flees the tent.
